The German romantic school, in the limited and precise sense of the term, consisted of the brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Johann Dietrich Gries, Tieck’s friend Wackenroder, and—­at a distance—­Zacharias Werner, the dramatist; besides a few others, their associates or disciples, whose names need not here be mentioned.  These were, as has been said, personal friends, they began to be heard of about 1795; and their quarters were at Jena and Berlin.  A later or younger group (Spaetromantiker) gathered in 1808 about the Zeitung fuer Einsiedler, published at Heidelberg.  These were Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, Ludwig Uhland, Joseph Goerres, and the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.  Arnim, Brentano, and Goerres were residing at the time at Heidelberg; the others contributed from a distance.  Arnim edited the Einsiedler; Goerres was teaching in the university.  There were, of course, many other adherents of the school, working individually at different times and places, scattered indeed all over Germany, and of various degrees of importance or unimportance, of whom I need mention only Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, the popular novelist and author of “Undine.”

The history of German romanticism has been repeatedly told.  There are exhaustive treatments of the subject by Julian Schmidt, Koberstein, Hettner ("Die Romantische Schule,” Braunschweig, 1850); Haym ("Die Romantische Schule,” Berlin, 1870); by the Danish critic, Georg Brandes ("Den Romantiske Skole i Tydskland").  But the most famous review of this passage of literary history is the poet Heine’s brilliant little book, “Die Romantische Schule,” [9] published at Paris in 1833.  This was written as a kind of supplement to Mme. de Stael’s “L’Allemagne” (1813), and was intended to instruct the French public as to some misunderstandings in Mme. de Stael’s book, and to explain what German romanticism really was.  Professor Boyesen cautions us to be on our guard against the injustice and untrustworthiness of Heine’s report.  The warning is perhaps not needed, for the animus of his book is sufficiently obvious.  Heine had begun as a romantic poet, but he had parted company with the romanticists because of the reactionary direction which the movement took.  He had felt the spell, and he renders it with wonderful vividness in his history of the school.  But, at the same time, the impatience of the political radical and the religious sceptic—­the “valiant soldier in the war for liberty”—­and the bitterness of the exile for opinion’s sake, make themselves felt.  His sparkling and malicious wit turns the whole literature of romanticism into sport; and his abuse of his former teacher, A. W. Schlegel, is personal and coarse beyond description.  Twenty years ago, he said, when he was a lad, what overflowing enthusiasm he would have lavished upon Uhland!  He used to sit on the ruins of the old castle at Duesseldorf declaiming Uhland’s poem